1. Field
The disclosure relates generally to an improved silicon photonic chip and more specifically to designing a photonic switching system that utilizes an equalized driver to increase performance of photonic switch diodes located on the silicon photonic chip.
2. Description of the Related Art
Silicon (Si) photonics is a technology that is under worldwide research and development due to its promise of delivering high performance optical components built in low-cost silicon chip technologies. Silicon photonics is the study and application of photonic systems that use silicon as an optical medium. The silicon is patterned with sub-micrometer precision into silicon photonic components. The silicon typically lies on top of a layer of silica in what is known as silicon-on-insulator (SOI).
Photonic switches have been considered as a replacement to electrical switches due to their very large per-port bandwidth enabled by wavelength-division multiplexing, and due to the energy savings provided by the mitigation of optical detection and re-transmission before and after the electrical switch. Photonic switches, which often leverage phase alteration within forward or reverse biased diodes to achieve path selectivity, have demonstrated broad spectral operation with low crosstalk. Designing a photonic switch can be a complex task, requiring tradeoffs of various performance metrics for an optimized design. Notably, speed of the photonic switch is often traded for or against other performance metrics in the design of the photonic switch.